


the dead of night

by kittybenzedrine



Category: Umbrella Academy
Genre: Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 09:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5920831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus has a bad dream.</p><p>Pre Apocalypse Suite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dead of night

Klaus wakes up screaming.

His throat hurts, and it takes him a minute to realize that no, his legs aren't restrained, they're just tangled in the sheets. His hands shake as he checks his wrists. Those weren't restrained either. Reaching up, he feels his throat. Nothing there, nothing's slowly choking him. The inside of his throat is raw from snoring, not from-

It was just a nightmare. Just a faint memory of a mission gone wrong.

He lets out a breath that's more of a sob than anything, and uses the blanket to dab his tears away. With his free hand, he reaches to the other side of the bed, patting around and feeling for Ben.

The sheets are cold where they should be. Klaus looks up. The bed is cold, and Ben is nowhere to be seen.

Confused and still shaken from the nightmare, Klaus untangles himself from the sheets and swings his legs off the side of the bed. He slides on a pair of boxers that were at the edge of the bed. _It's fucking_ cold _in here_ , he thinks to himself, the cold air caressing his sleepwarm skin.

As he makes his way to the bedroom door, he glances around the room. Bathroom is dark, as is the closet. He shivers, sniffs hard and wipes his nose on the back of his hand. Tears cling to his lashes, welling up in the corners.

The hallway is colder than the room. Immediately, he reaches out and opens the door to the guest room, peeking inside to see if Ben laid down in there for some reason. It's empty, though.

He shuffles down the hall, trying to force his tears down. They continue to run down his face, though, and he futilely wipes at them.

The next door he comes upon is Ben's painting room. The crack under the door is dark, but he opens the door and looks in anyways. The canvases and easels have cloth draped over them, and the couch pushed to the back of the room has no one laying on it.

"Ben?" He calls in a shaky voice, glancing at the bottom of the guest bathroom door. It's dark, and he doesn't get a response. 

He looks into the kitchen. Ben's a black hole and eats more than his bodyweight, but they're not in there.

Living room is vacant as well.

"Ben?" Klaus calls louder, and is met with silence. "Are you here, babe?"

 _Maybe they went running_ , he thinks, _even though it's four in the morning. ___

__A thought pops into his mind, and unlocks the front door and looks out into the driveway. The car is still there, but he was certain it would have woken him up if it had been started._ _

He shuffles back to the bedroom, hoping to hear some trace of Ben wandering around. Maybe they were home, and didn't realize Klaus was up from a bad dream. Even though he screamed. 

Cynically, Klaus mutters "Almost like you're a ghost-", and than stops, hand paused on the doorknob.

It wasn't 1969.

It was 1977.

Ben was nowhere to be found because they hadn't been home in eight years. They hadn't come home because of a mission gone wrong.

Klaus is on his knees crying before he realizes it.

Ben is gone.

He cries for a long while and tires himself out, and when he gets up, he has a fleeting thought of calling Allison for comfort. Then remembers that he hasn't had a number for her since she got divorced.

He climbs to his feet, but instead of going into the bedroom, he takes a blanket from the hall closet and heads into the painting room. He'll sleep on that sofa.

Klaus can't bear to sleep in that empty bed, not now. He curls up on the cold cushions, which have been worn in from many sleepless nights.

He doesn't quite manage to get back to sleep.


End file.
